High-quality data can fuel your company's marketing efforts

Companies everywhere eager to make the connection between data enhancement and marketing. They're working hard to gather as much information as possible on each current patron and potential future customer they know - once they have one little tidbit of knowledge, they're searching frantically to find more, thus developing a complete portrait of each consumer. But what's the end result? What can they ultimately do with all this data?

The potential answers to this question are just about countless, but here's one idea that's beginning to catch on - they can use it to sharpen their strategies for content marketing.

Let's connect the dots - seemingly everyone these days is using content to build a brand. Whether you're publishing a blog, posting on social media or putting out videos on YouTube, you're putting together an online presence that attracts more people to your company.

According to Forbes, the logical next step is to take all the customer data you've been gathering and use it to improve your content. Hana Abaza, director of marketing for Uberflip, says this mindset can help you achieve your long-term marketing goals.

"Good content attracts visitors, but great content hooks people for life," Abaza explained. "To deliver the right content to the right person, marketers must embrace the data that is at their fingertips  their own and what's available externally. Data can drive several aspects of your content marketing strategy to help ensure that your content marketing efforts are as effective as possible."

Here are three likely side effects from merging data enhancement and content marketing:

Better original ideas If you know who your customers are and where their interests lie, you can use that information to come up with original content ideas that are right up their alley. What kinds of topics will consumers appreciate seeing blogs and social posts about?

Quicker distribution of content You can also use your knowledge of people's preferred communication channels to your benefit. Say, for example, you know your customers are avid checkers of their email, and they're willing to reply, to. You can capitalize by sending more valuable email marketing content.

An improved customer experience Overall, you're looking to smooth out the journey from point A - initially seeing an interesting piece of content - to point B, when the consumer places an order and becomes a paying customer. You can use your customer data to provide personalized calls to action that help make this happen. The more you know about your clientele, the easier this becomes.